


no good at lip service (except when they're yours)

by endofadream



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, M/M, SO MUCH FLUFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3534215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofadream/pseuds/endofadream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few doors down a man is standing, watching, just shy of the concrete steps leading up to another townhouse. The early-morning sunlight paints him gold, the dappled shade of the trees stretching over what the light can’t touch, and it all blurs him into an obscure far-away figure, like something from an oil painting, and Lee has a half-formed thought that the closer he gets the less he’ll see.</p>
<p>(Or, the AU where they both meet after terrible one-night stands.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	no good at lip service (except when they're yours)

Lee is no stranger to waking up in odd ways, because he was a college student new to the big city once, and with that came a lot of the experimentation that he hadn't been able to do back home in Texas. But waking up to his clothes being quite literally thrown at him is a new and unpleasant one.

Blinking through bleary eyes and trying to make sense of the pounding in his head and the unfamiliar bedroom he’s in (it comes back to him in slow alcohol-soaked flashes, and vaguely he can recall a semi-cute man all over him at the bar, remembers a fuzzy cab ride full of groping and sloppy kisses and then some spectacularly lackluster sex once they’d made it to the bedroom) Lee sits up and makes a sound of protest when his crumpled button-down drapes over his head, shadowing his world in dark plum. “The hell?”

“Get dressed and get out,” the mostly-naked guy standing at the dresser hisses, flinging one of Lee’s socks at him. Lee catches it as he’s pulling his shirt off his head and trying to work through the fog of too much alcohol and not enough sleep; the words are ricocheting around him but have no meaning, are jumbled up in frustrating bunches like they’d been when he was a kid. The guy is still scrambling around the room and muttering, “He’s home, fuck, he wasn't supposed to be home until Monday,” as he straightens everything. And then it hits Lee hard, like all the shots this guy had bought for him the night before.

“‘He’?” Lee all but squawks, sitting up and shrugging his shirt on, leaving it draped open as he pulls the covers aside and looks for his underwear with shaking fingers. They’re in a ball just near the foot of the bed and he hurriedly pulls them on, grabbing his pants from a bedpost and hopping into them, feeling too-tall and awkward and too aware of his body, of the faint traces of come dried on his stomach and the hickey on his chest. Those limbs he pulls in tight, trying to make himself small to compensate for the nauseating rush to emotions. “You’re fucking dating someone?”

“Married,” the guy says absently, picking the used condom up off the floor. When he throws it into the trashcan and covers it with tissue Lee finally notices the wedding band on his finger, wonders how he didn't see it last night. He notices, also, that the guy in daylight is nothing like the guy Lee had seen only hours before, is more ragged and unpolished than the sweet yet dirty talk in Lee’s ear over the din of the bar and the hand on the small of his back had led him to believe; perhaps it’s a little bit of the alcohol mixed in with the ugly knowledge that he’d been somebody’s mistress that leads to this. Perhaps it’s that, in the white-gold light of morning when everything is at its brightest, cast in stark relief, the guy’s eyes aren't as green as Lee remembers, and his well-styled blond hair is a poorly-cut mess. The quirk to his lips that Lee had become smitten with is calculating and nasty, and the set of his eyes reminds Lee of a snake planning its next move.

“Are you joking?” Lee hears himself ask. He’s getting dressed on autopilot more than anything else, and he isn't sure if it’s just the hangover alone now that’s roiling his stomach. He stops, hands hanging limp now at his sides, and tries to work through this, tries to process the fact that he'd just been used, and not the sort of desperate-and-single used he'd aimed for when he'd left his apartment. “Please tell me that you’re joking and that you didn't just take some stranger home for a fuck because your husband wasn't around.”

The sound of footsteps on stairs, and the guy (Lee can’t be fucked to even remember his name anymore, knows it’s something that starts with an N or an M) all but shoves Lee out the door and down the hallway. As Lee scrambles to hide somewhere until the bedroom door closes he’s thankful that the guy at least didn't make him go out the window and scale down the building like a teenager; he doesn't think that what’s left of his pride can handle a walk of shame coupled with that.

Instead, and marginally less embarrassing, Lee ends up jumping out the open ground-floor window and falling into a bush with a hiss of pain and a sharp stab in his elbow. He hears faint arguing from what he assumes is the bedroom, then the thud of footsteps on stairs again, and he panics, jumping up and tripping his way out of the bush, stumbling over his long legs like he’d do all the time when he was still growing into them and before he took dance lessons in college. As he books it down the street he’s all too aware that his shirt is still half-undone, the chill of the morning air biting into his skin and sending him shivering.

A few doors down a man is standing, watching, just shy of the concrete steps leading up to another townhouse. The early-morning sunlight paints him gold, the dappled shade of the trees stretching over what the light can’t touch, and it all blurs him into an obscure far-away figure, like something from an oil painting, and Lee has a half-formed thought that the closer he gets the less he’ll see.

Stopping a few feet from the guy, and discovering that, no, he does not get blurrier the closer Lee gets, Lee catches his breath, sucking in great lungfuls as he rests his hand on an iron fencepost. Eyes closed to ward off the nausea he asks, breathless, “Is there anyone following me?”

“Uh…no, not that I can see. You’re all clear.” It’s amused, accented, and also thick with the same fatigue that Lee can feel heavy in his bones.

“Thank god,” Lee gasps, straightening up. There’s a stitch in his side and a hitch in his breath, and it’s a struggle to ignore the outright throbbing of his head now that it beats in time with the fast pace of his heart. “This fucking guy said he was single only to come find out that his husband is home early from his business trip, god. What a fucking cliche.”

He opens his eyes to find the man watching with interest, feels his skin prickle at the intensity there, and realizes what he's just said. There’s a blazer draped over the guy's shoulder, and one of his jeans pockets sticks out slightly, like he too had gotten dressed in a hurry, perhaps before someone even woke up. His dark brown hair is mussed in the back and sticks out at the sides, and his eyes are tired, puffy, and he’s sporting the same amount of morning stubble Lee can feel on his own face.

“Walk of shame as well?” he asks, then immediately regrets it. It comes out unbidden, accidental, and way too personal, but Lee has never been good around cute guys when he’s sober, especially cute guys with hot accents.

The guy’s face blooms pink, and he looks down, scuffs at the sidewalk with the toe of his loafer, one that is shiny-brown and expensive-looking. “Ah—regrettably, yeah. No use lying about it. My first one since I moved to the States.”

“Were they good?” Lee asks before he can help himself. He knows that he should just walk away, should let this guy deal with his own terrible morning after in whatever way that he needs to, but something draws him closer, keeps him rooted to the spot. There's a genuineness to the guy's eyes, a gentleness about him that seems to contradict what he's done and why he's standing in last night's clothes on a residential New York street at seven in the morning on a Sunday. He seems too...wholesome, is how Lee would describe him, and not at all the type to go crawling around bars and clubs looking for a good time.

“I’ve had better orgasms by myself,” the guy says, then blushes even darker; his deep, even baritone sends the words straight to Lee's core, and Lee tries—and fails—not to notice the way that the color blooms against the guy’s skin, or the way that his tongue passes over the thin pink of his lips and leaves them glistening. The guy’s eyes flicker down, away, and flutter only for the briefest moment to Lee’s before down again, and his voice is tight and dryly humorous when he says, “Wow, you probably did not want to know that.”

“I asked,” Lee says, then laughs a little too loud, thankful that there aren’t a lot of people on the streets this early in the morning. “My guy was about as personal as a sex toy, which it figures since he was married." He tries to stop but can't; it's like an endless stream, a loop of truths and half-digested words that won't stay down no matter how hard Lee tries or how much he tells himself to  _shut up, stop while you're ahead_. "It kind of sucks knowing that you’re someone’s escape.”

The guy nods, and Lee finds himself admiring the slope of his nose, the bright blue of his eyes highlighted by the sun. He’s tall and looks to be nearly identical to Lee’s body type, the tight sleeves of his own button-down doing nothing to hide the well-defined curve of muscle. Already Lee can tell that he’s a man of few words, and that those few words are what counts.

“If it’s not too bold,” Lee asks as he begins to do up the buttons on his shirt, trying to ignore the faint tremble of his fingers as he gets each one through its hole, “why? You seem like the old-world gentlemanly type.”

A laugh, faint and quick, and a smile that brings forth endearing crow’s feet from the corners of his eyes. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he says; and, then adds, “I had a bad breakup. I was with her for awhile and things just, I don’t know, fell apart in ways we weren't prepared for.”

Lee’s heart plummets heavy into his stomach, sinking like it's going to drag him down, too, with the rest of his half-conceived fantasies. It’d been foolish to hope that a man as charming and gorgeous as this one would actually swing Lee’s way, but Lee holds onto these foolish notions the way that children hold onto their favorite toys: For comfort, to know that they’re there and that they always will be.

He asks, “So you’re—?” and tries not to focus on the disappointment in his voice, tries to school it into something peppy and upbeat and not at all like he'd been hoping for—what, a rebound? Is that what he wants? He’s never been the rebound type but with all his years of poor luck he’s willing to do just about anything now.

“Bisexual,” the guy interrupts. He tilts his head, hitches his blazer a little higher on his shoulder. “If that’s what you were going to ask. I just left a guy’s house.” He gives Lee a crooked, self-conscious smile, and extends his hand. “My name is Richard, by the way.”

Lee takes it, notes calloused fingers, soft palms, and a steady, firm grip, the kind that his dad would be proud of. “Lee," he says, dropping his hand and rocking back on his heels. "I, um, went to prom with a girl I was seeing in high school. Needless to say it didn’t last.”

It garners him a laugh, low and genuine, and Richard’s eyes sparkle in the light as he grins. “I know a thing or two about failed dates in my youth myself.”

“Please.” Lee looks Richard over and tries hard not to drool over the lanky, lean build of his body, his mussed-but-looks-on-purpose hair, the sharp angularity of his face and the bright blue of his eyes that goosepimples Lee’s skin. “I have a hard time picturing you ever struggling with your looks.”

“I was a beanpole with a nose I hadn't grown into.”

“I bet you were still cute,” Lee counters. Then he pauses. Is he flirting with a man he’s just met? One look at Richard, at the surprise clearly painted on his face, and Lee knows that he’s doomed. Sure, he’s done stranger than run into someone also beginning their walk of shame, and he’s certainly done stranger than what he’s doing now, but, like the beginning of every hackneyed love story that Lee’s read over the years, there’s just  _something_ about Richard.

Silence drapes over them as the sun climbs higher and begins to warm Lee’s back. The birds are chirping in the trees above, and down the street a dog begins barking. Lee’s stomach gives a lurch and he’s reminded as he checks the time on his phone that he hasn't eaten since last night.

“I hope this isn't too forward,” he says, looking anywhere but Richard’s eyes as he pockets his phone again, “but…would you want to maybe, uh, get breakfast with me? I haven’t eaten since last night and this hangover could really use something huge and greasy.”

To Lee’s surprise Richard nods, chewing on his lower lip. The look that he gives Lee is bashful as he scuffs at the ground, but his voice is firm and sure as he agrees, and Lee is almost certain that it's the most adorable thing that he's seen in a long time.

They end up at a diner a street over. The syrup pitchers are sticky in their racks on the table, and Lee’s coffee mug has a chip on the rim and a scratch in the paint on the handle; across the weathered wooden table Richard stirs his tea and examines it with the care that only a Brit can. Or so Richard says. Banter and gentle teasing come easy, far easier than Lee had ever been expecting, like they’ve been friends for years.

Lee smiles into his sip of coffee and tries not to think about the charming domesticity of it all. They talk over bacon and eggs and waffles, and Richard scrunches his nose up when Lee chooses the pecan syrup to douse his in. In return Lee makes a few jabs about Richard’s sausage being a clear indication that he didn't get enough last night. Richard chokes over that one, and the glare he sends Lee across the table has Lee giggling maniacally and attracting the attention of an older man sitting at the bar across from them.

“He keeps looking at me now!” Lee complains.

“It’s your own bloody fault,” Richard grouses, but there’s no real heat behind it, and Lee can see the faint flicker of a smile before Richard takes a bite of eggs.

They learn last names and professions, Lee opening up about how difficult it’s been finding a stable job and Richard admitting that sometimes he feels like moving to America was the wrong choice. Lee isn't surprised to learn that Richard is forty-three (though he thinks that he looks very good for his age—much too good, in fact), though Richard is a little surprised to learn that Lee is thirty-five.

More than once Lee’s eyes are drawn to Richard’s hand on the table, to the mountain range of fine bone and the raised knots of twisting veins, and his own twitches on his lap with the urge to reach out and cover it. He wonders if Richard’s lips are as soft as they look, and then he backtracks with red-faced shame, tries to tell himself that this is just breakfast, that he and Richard will part and get lost in the sea of New York anonymity to become just a gray blur in each other’s memories.

When the check comes they argue over who gets to pay for it, because their waitress had had other ideas about the two of them, if the little smile and wink she’d given when she’d set the check down on the table were anything to go by, and Lee tries not to look too hurt at Richard’s annoyance. In the end, Lee ends up paying the tip and Richard takes care of the bill.

They stand up, hover awkwardly for a moment at their separate sides of the table. Lee feels foolish, feels awkward and too-tall, and he resists the urge to rub at the back of his neck. “You wanna head outside?” he asks as Richard’s shrugging his blazer on and straightening the cuffs.

Richard gives him a smile. “Of course.”

It’s warmer now outside, the sun crawling up higher in the sky, but under the overhang of the diner it’s still cool. The world has begun to come alive, and Lee people watches for a moment, hands in his pockets. There’s so much that he’d like to say but isn't sure how without being too forward or ruining their tentative whatever-it-is.

And then there are lips on his.

They’re soft and warm and taste faintly like syrup and sausage. There’s a broad hand on his face, fingertips calloused and gentle, and Lee is yearning towards it, carding his own hand through thick dark hair and gently holding, breathing in sharply, once, and not letting it out until they part. It comes out breathless, feathery, a quiet “Wow.”

“I’ve been wanting to do that all morning,” Richard says, his hand sliding down to cup the back of Lee’s neck, and Lee bites his lip to hide a whine. Up close his eyes are even more intense as they scan Lee’s, and Lee feels rooted, stuck, helpless to move. “I hope I didn't scare you off.”

“God, no,” Lee breathes. He leans in again, brushes their noses together before pressing his lips to Richard’s, and his whole body shudders as Richard's lips move under his. “I wanted to kiss you the moment that I saw you.”

Richard’s laugh is warm and deep, and his grin fans lines from the corners of his eyes, lines that Lee wants to kiss and memorize and then maybe kiss some more, just because. “Good. Then I hope that you’ll accept this.” Lee’s hand dangling down at his side is eased open, and a piece of paper is pushed in before it’s closed again with gentle fingers.

With one final kiss Richard is backing away, nodding at Lee’s fist and saying, “I’m free tomorrow night,” before he disappears into the crowd.

Lee unfolds it once Richard is gone, stares at the numbers scrawled on the back of their receipt in messy, slanted writing, the product of a rushed job, and he can recall Richard shoving something in his pocket when Lee had approached the stand. He flips it over, staring at the “have a wonderful day!” written by their waitress in loopy cursive with a winking face at the end until the letters blur in his hand. He's aware, after a few moments, that he's biting back a smile.

He types Richard’s number into his phone, drafts a text, and gets halfway to the subway when he decides to just send it anyway, his stomach fluttering as he presses the send button and watches the blue bubble pop up on the screen. The response is almost instantaneous, a text with Richard's address and apartment number, followed up with _By the way, you're a very good kisser._

Lee thumbs back quickly _I can do so much more._

_Is that a promise?_

Lee grins at his phone, types out _You'll just have to wait until tomorrow night_ , and shoves it back into his pocket as he boards the subway.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr (endofadream)! As always, reviews are lovely and I cherish all of them, and feedback is so so helpful <3


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